Top Quark and Heavy Vector Boson Associated Production at the Atlas Experiment
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"#$ "%&'" (' ! ) #& *+ & , & -. / . , &0 , . &( 1, 23)!&4 . . . & & 56 & , "#7 #'6 . & #'6 & . , & . .3(& ( & 8 !10 92&4 . ) *)+ . : ./ *)#+ . *) +& . , & "#$ :;; &&;< = : ::: #>$ ? 4@!%$5%#$?>%'>'> 4@!%$5%#$?>%'>># ! #"?%# TOP QUARK AND HEAVY VECTOR BOSON ASSOCIATED PRODUCTION AT THE ATLAS EXPERIMENT Olga Bessidskaia Bylund Top quark and heavy vector boson associated production at the ATLAS experiment Modelling, measurements and effective field theory Olga Bessidskaia Bylund ©Olga Bessidskaia Bylund, Stockholm University 2017 ISBN print 978-91-7649-343-4 ISBN PDF 978-91-7649-344-1 Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice US-AB, Stockholm 2017 Distributor: Department of Physics, Stockholm University Cover image by Henrik Åkerstedt Contents 1 Preface 5 1.1 Introduction ............................ 5 1.2Structureofthethesis...................... 5 1.3 Contributions of the author . ................. 6 2 Theory 8 2.1TheStandardModelandQuantumFieldTheory....... 8 2.1.1 Particle content of the Standard Model ........ 8 2.1.2 S-matrix expansion .................... 11 2.1.3 Cross sections ....................... 13 2.1.4 Renormalisability and gauge invariance ........ 15 2.1.5 Structure of the Lagrangian ............... 16 2.1.6 QED ............................ 17 2.1.7 QCD ............................ 18 2.1.8 Weak interactions .................... 20 2.1.9 Electroweak interactions ................. 22 2.1.10 Electroweak symmetry breaking ............ 22 2.2TestsoftheStandardModel................... 23 2.3 Questions not answered by the Standard Model ........ 24 2.4 Motivation for ttV¯ searches................... 25 2.5 The treatment of the Wt and tW Z processes with Diagram Removal.............................. 26 2.6EffectiveFieldTheory...................... 28 3 Experimental setup 32 3.1 The Large Hadron Collider ................... 32 3.2 The ATLAS experiment ..................... 33 3.2.1 Inner Detector ...................... 34 3.2.2 Liquid Argon Calorimeter ................ 36 3.2.3 The Tile Calorimeter . ................. 37 3.2.4 Muon system ....................... 39 3.2.5 Magnet system ...................... 41 3.2.6 Trigger system ...................... 41 4 Measurements of the ttV¯ production cross sections 43 4.1 Object definitions . ....................... 44 4.1.1 Jets ............................ 44 4.1.2 Electrons ......................... 45 4.1.3 Muons ........................... 46 4.1.4 B-jets ........................... 46 4.1.5 Missing ET ........................ 47 4.1.6 Overlap removal ..................... 47 1 4.2 Signal regions ........................... 47 4.3 Control regions .......................... 51 4.4 Fake leptons, overview ...................... 51 4.5 Background estimation with Diagram Removal ........ 53 −1 4.6 Analysis I at 8 TeV, 20.3fb .................. 58 4.6.1 Event yields I ....................... 58 4.6.2 The WZ background I .................. 59 4.6.3 Results I .......................... 59 −1 4.7 Analysis II at 13 TeV, 3.2fb ................. 62 4.7.1 Yields II .......................... 62 4.7.2 WZ II ........................... 62 4.7.3 Results II ......................... 62 4.8 Analysis III at 13 TeV, 36 fb−1 ................. 66 4.8.1 Yields III . ....................... 66 4.8.2 Redefinition of trilepton regions for analysis III .... 68 4.8.3 The WZ background III ................. 71 4.8.4 Fake leptons III ...................... 72 4.8.5 Results III ......................... 75 5 Effective field theory 77 5.1 Cross section and distributions with effective operators .... 77 5.2 EFT limits, simultaneous fit ................... 85 5.3 EFT simulations for ATLAS ................... 88 5.4 EFT limits from the 13 TeV measurement ........... 94 6 Conclusions and outlook 96 6.1 Uncorrelated systematic uncertainties .............107 6.2 Correlated systematic uncertainties . ..............107 7 Sammanfattning 109 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Jörgen Sjölin for helping me choose the subject and to find my niches in the field, which have been more to the phenomenological side. I am grateful to my co-supervisor Sten Hellman and my team leader David Milstead for their feedback and support in the writing of this thesis. I am happy to be part of a supportive and positive group in Stockholm. Katarina in particular has been a rock. Many thanks to the colleagues and friends who helped proof read sections of my thesis. All the publications that this thesis is based on are the result of collab- orative work. In this thesis I highlight my contributions while also giving the overall context and results. Below, I acknowledge the contribution of my collaborators in the cases where we were working on closely related subjects. Hovhannes Khandanyan (Stockholm) developed the software and defined the signal regions of the trilepton channel that were used for the ttV¯ analysis I. I evaluated the systematic uncertainty on the WZ background for analysis I together with Kerim Suruliz (Sussex) and Jörgen Sjölin. Kerim provided the simulations in Sherpa, which I used to compute transfer factors and the largest extrapolation uncertainties for the WZ process for analysis I. For the ttV¯ analyses II and III, the WZ extrapolation uncertainties were evaluated by Kerim; I cite these results for completeness. The fake rates for analysis II and III were derived by Jörgen Sjölin. I was involved in the validation of the fake rates for analysis III. The final results for the ttV¯ analyses that are shown in this thesis were obtained by Tamara Vasquez Schroeder in analysis I and by Maria Moreno Llacer (CERN) for analysis II. Maria also redefined the regions in the same sign dilepton channel for analysis III, which gave us a higher expected sen- sitivity for the ttW¯ measurement. The fake factors used to scale the γ +X background for analysis III were derived by Alexandra Schulte (Mainz). I would like to thank Kerim for demonstrating the functionality of the software for analysis III, which allowed me to design the fit for the EFT coefficients in a nice way. Many thanks to Karl Gellerstedt (Stockholm) for dressing the ttl¯ +l− EFT samples so that I could derive the parameters for the EFT fit for analysis III in regions that closely resemble the signal regions of our analysis. I am grateful to Fabio Maltoni (UCLouvain) who welcomed me to his team and to the MCnet studentship program, which allowed me to spend three and a half months in Belgium, learning about Effective Field Theory and the Diagram Removal methods. For the EFT phenomenological analysis that I performed when I was based in Louvain, I worked together with Ioan- nis Tsinikos on simulating the ttμ¯ +μ− process. We discussed the strategy together with my supervisor for the time Fabio Maltoni and collaborators Eleni Vryonidou and Cen Zhang. Cen had provided the code describing 3 the top quark interactions in the framework of Effective Field Theory and patiently answered my questions that arose while I was working on he EFT fit for analysis III. I learned the Diagram Removal 2 method from Federico Demartin (UCLouvain) and had many discussions with him. On a more personal level, I would like to thank Ioannis for being my gym buddy and Joze for cooking for me while I was in Belgium, you made my stay more enjoyable. Thank you to my figure skating coach Susanne and skating friends Natasja and Camilla for the mental training and a great summer. Thank you to Henrik Åkerstedt for the photos with the ATLAS detectors and for many memorable adventures. I am very grateful for my big loving family and happy to have great friends. Thank you for helping me through the tougher periods and for lifting me up higher in good times. An extra high five goes to Ea, Mike, Lotta, Mariana, Surre, Tomas K. and Stefan. To my husband Tomas, you have been incredible. 4 1 Preface 1.1 Introduction The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics [1], [2] describes our best understanding of particle physics at present. The predictions of the Standard Model have been confirmed by the discoveries of the particles it predicts and by measuring their interactions. Some notable examples of this are the confirmation of electroweak unification by the discoveries of the W and Z bosons 1982 and 1983 [3] and the discovery of the sixth and heaviest quark, namely the top quark, by the CDF and D0 experiments at the Tevatron in 1995 [4]. In order to produce the heaviest particles of the SM and to study their properties, large energies are required. For this purpose, proton beams are accelerated to close to the speed of light inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) [5] and brought to collide at the centre of the ATLAS experiment [6]. The protons scatter against each other, creating new particles, which are registered in the ATLAS detector and then the collision events are analysed. In this thesis, the physics of top quarks is explored. The LHC acts as a top quark factory, producing millions of top quark pairs each year. The main focus of this thesis is on the production of top quark pairs in association with a vector boson (Z or W ) at the ATLAS experiment. In order to model an important background to ttZ¯ , namely single top associated tW Z production, at next-to-leading order in QCD, the resulting overlap with other processes needs